Typecasting can be the death of many a good actor's career, as Christopher Eccleston is no doubt aware.

Eccleston has decided to leave Dr Who after just one series

Why else would the 41-year-old Mancunian turn his back on Doctor Who just one episode into its new series?

But Eccleston may find it harder than he imagines to cast off the Time Lord mantle.

For the annals of film and TV are littered with actors who will forever be associated with one iconic role.

Take Sean Connery, who shot to fame as James Bond only to find audiences unwilling to accept him as anything else.

"I have always hated that damn James Bond," he once said. "I'd like to kill him."

But that did not stop him from returning to the part on two occasions: first in 1971's Diamonds Are Forever, and again, belatedly, in 1983's Never Say Never Again.

Character actor

In recent years Connery appears to have moved on, winning an Oscar for The Untouchables and reinventing himself as a gruff, grey-bearded character actor.

However, he acknowledges he will never completely discard Ian Fleming's suave superspy, saying: "It's with me till I go in the box."

Christopher Reeve played the Man of Steel in four films

The late Christopher Reeve suffered a similar fate after playing the Man of Steel in 1978's Superman.

The Julliard-trained actor became a star overnight but - like Connery before him - could not make a similar impression in any other role.

"I asked Sean on how to avoid being typecast," he once revealed. "He said, 'First you have to be good enough that they ask you to play it again and again'."

Reeve was certainly good enough - perhaps too good. Though he tried to shake his heroic image - notably by playing a murderer in the 1980 thriller Deathtrap - he was unable to, as he put it, "escape the cape".

Other actors have resorted to drastic measures to reinvent themselves on screen.